Middle American husband and wife team Wayne and Liz are the Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsome of lo-fi Christian rock. Just when the alt-Christian musical landscape looked bleak following in the wake of WFMU's beloved Danielson, here comes Wayne and Liz. Sounding like a mix between Daniel Johnston and Moe Tucker singing "Jesus" with the Velvet Underground, this is some of the most wonderful outsider lo-fi stuff we've come across. "9-11 Warning" is a 12-minute outsider conspiracy tour-de-force rant and the other tracks are pure, aching beauty. And best of all, they're most likely not even aware of their avant-status. They have released no CDs and there's virtually no information about them -- true outsiders. There's a huge whack of amazing MP3s here. Our advice: download them all!

I bet all you parents out there have been wondering how to get your kids interested in the music of Devo. Well, Disney came up with a solution: get the original members of Devo together to re-record some classic songs from the band's catalog, and have the vocals sung by 5 kids billed as Devo 2.0 (or possibly DEV2.0, if you go by the banner on the site). Check out the Devo 2.0 site for a bunch of videos that have been posted to the site (coming soon: Downloads! Games! Devo 2.0 Shop!), and get ready to buy the CD in March.

Although it's good to see Disney continuing where the Mini Pops left off, and it's amusing to come up with a list of songs that Devo 2.0 probably isn't going to cover ("I Need A Chick", perhaps?) I have to confess that I prefer my pop-songs-remade-with-child-vocals a bit more on the incoherent side. Which is why I was reminded of this Dutch version of "Rock Me Amadeus" (RealAudio link) that Mark G. of the Evolution Control Committee played on $mall ¢hange's show back in 2002. And more recently, of course, Deva (the female-fronted Devo cover band) played on Music to Spazz By last October. Not as kid-friendly as Devo 2.0, of course, but then again they play their own instruments.

An ugly new piece of broadcast flag legislation will be discussed by the Senate Commerce Committee today, and it carries the potential of sending digital media to an early grave. The Digital Content Protection Act (DCPA) would make it illegal and/or impossible for you to record anything broadcast on digital or satellite radio or TV by allowing the FCC to require copy-protection flags on all new consumer electronics. And we're not just talking digital radio or TV receivers anymore: there's a loophole in the text that would allow the FCC to mandate that these flags be placed in any device that might come into contact with radios or TVs (that means DVD players, MP3 players, computers, cell phones, etc).

You can bet that the RIAA and MPAA are throwing all sorts of money at this effort to dispose of that nasty "fair use" caveat in copyright law. You know, the one that allows us regular folks to record a program and listen to it later (time-shifting), to use part of a program as a teaching tool in the classroom, or to provide a critique of the work. Instead of embracing digital media as a new sales market, these thugs would rather get their money by slipping in uber-restrictive laws to control how we use media, screwing up our personal electronic devices, and by suing our asses one by one. For more info on the industry's interpretation of customer service, check out Kenzo's guide to the Sony DRM debacle.

Read the DCPA proposal here (PDF), and then check out this excellent analysis of its implications. If that got you riled up, visit the EFF's action page (here you can send a letter in opposition of the DCPA, if your state happens to have a senator on the committee: AK, AZ, AR, CA, FL, HI, LA, MA, ME, MS, MT, NE, NV, NH, NJ, ND, OR, SC, TX, VA, WA, WV). And there is a glimmer of hope: the last time this broadcast flag issue wiggled past the FCC decisionmakers, the EFF/PK's subsequent lawsuit was instrumental in the courts overturning the decision. Links via Boing Boing

UPDATE: Alex kindly points us toward PK's wrap-up of the hearing, along with the official statement PK submitted to the Senate Commerce Committee. The RIAA's fear of technology and understanding of digital media really lights up when you read this quote from another article covering the hearing:

Mitch Bainwol, head of the RIAA, told the Senate that the
issue is "not casual recording by listeners. It is not taping off the
radio like we used to do. We are talking about allowing broadcast
programs to be automatically captured and then disaggregated, song by
song, into a massive library of music."

... yeah, a massive library of low-quality sounding music. Anyone who is capable of bothering with song-capture technology would probably rather just buy a CD: the bit-rate for the new HD radio is a pathetic 64 k in the main channel and 32 k in the side channel (though this isn't entirely comparable to MP3 bit-rates, mark Station Manager Ken's words... the sound quality will be far worse than analog FM).

On a positive note, one of the broadcast flag's main champion, Senator Ted Stevens, seemed crestfallen upon learning that he wouldn't be able to record a song off the radio and copy it to his iPod.

January 23, 2006

Back in the 1980's when WFMU had its public access TV show that Mark Rudolph put together, one of my favorite bits was the dance number clip from the 1966 Indian film Gumnaam. Masked dancers bug out and go completely apeshit to a totally high-energy, mutated surf number "Jan Pehechan-Ho" performed by Bollywood music legend Mohammed Rafi (though, as Michael Cudahy once pointed out to me, the band's drumkit in the film wields the name "Ted Lyons and His Cubs"). Eventually Terry Zwigoff used this song in his film Ghost World, where his counter-culture-immersed heroine Enid kicks off the flick by mirroring the film's dancers while watching the clip on TV. The song appeared in whole on the soundtrack, and as if that wasn't enough, WFMU's Rob Weisberg sang "Jan Pehechan-ho" (Real Audio) a few years back with the Hoof N' Mouth Sinfonia (WFMU's fundraiser finale in-house covers band comprised of staffers!) My wife still doesn't let me play "Jan Pehechan-ho" in the house because she had to listen to me practice the guitar line along with the stereo nonstop for three weeks (I blew it anyway when we actually performed it). Besides the grainy, nth-generation clip I have from WFMU-TV, I have yet to see a clear complete video version of this great number, but thanks to Turbanhead and WFMU friend (and fellow FMU blogger) James Allenspach, we have it in its full glory right here (mpg file, 55 MB).

WFMU DJ and sex bloggist Miss Amanda celebrated her birthday over the weekend. Yes, boys, she’s legal now, so line up! Over there … behind the girls, the dead-duck rapists, the porn-celebrity blow-up dolls, and the transgendered vegetables. I wish I could have bought her a really, really nice birthday present, but I couldn’t, so I made her a cake instead.

Once I started poking around, looking for my 9-inch round pans, I realized it’s been years since I actually baked a cake. I’m more of a pie and cookie baker, it turns out. But I have an old recipe for a killer devil’s food cake that involves making a separate chocolate custard that has to be folded into the batter, along with some beaten egg whites, and it is so complicated and so time-consuming that I figured no one else would bake it for her, so that’s what I decided to do—with pink peppermint buttercream frosting and 72% cocoa-content dark chocolate pastilles on top, to make it look kind of insane.

Of course, to make a proper cake you do need cake flour. Yes, you do. Cake flour is made from low-protein “soft” wheat, which gives the flour a low gluten content, it says here. It makes the cake more tender, okay? Okay, so just try finding it in your local supermarket—or, more to the point, try finding it in my local supermarket. You won’t. You can go to the next town over, and the next town after that, and clear to the next city, and you won’t find cake flour anywhere. And if you ask the grocery store people about it, they won’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I spent a lot of time wandering up and down supermarket aisles, feeling like Mrs. Brady, Old Lady, pushing my shopping trolley and muttering to myself about when comics cost a penny and they all were made of wood. And don’t even get me started about eggbeaters. You kids today don’t even know what an eggbeater is, do you?

Eventually I found some cake flour, and I got everything else I needed, and I baked the cake and was really happy with how it came out. (Except maybe I could have gone just a little easier on the peppermint extract.) But the whole shopping-for-cake-flour thing made me realize that, although I don’t like to admit it, I really am getting, um, older. It doesn’t seem fair that it’s Miss Amanda’s birthday, but I’m the one who’s aging.

After his last few wacky pronouncements, calling the Reverend Pat Robertson "anti-gay" actually rehabilitates his image a bit, in an intolerant, religious-right kind of way. But here is a video clip of him letting his true feelings out during a 1992 taping of The Larry King show [download video, 13 meg wmv file]. This footage came from the satellite feed of the show, and was not broadcast on CNN. In it, you'll see the Reverend complain about being ambushed by homosexual callers, while a CNN handler (or a Robertson aid, I can't tell which) bitches about the call screener and most significantly, reminds Robertson not to answer the questions asked of him, but to speak about whatever Robertson wants. The clip gets good at the 1:56 mark, but you can't fast forward due to a weird conversion error. Found this on youtube.com but I think the original came from Brian Springer's 1995 documentary Spin, which featured uncensored, un-broadcast satellite footage of Robertson, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot and others.

If you think you’ve got a decent AM or shortwave portable, but you’re not receiving much beyond local stations and static at night, there’s one easy way to give it a chance to perform. Take it outside. Most houses are full of RF (radio noise) generating devices and signal blocking material. Big buildings are often worse.

Of course, what’s better is to get away from all the buildings and electrical devices altogether. That’s why I like to DX on summer camping trips, and that’s where the dial scan I’m featuring on this post was recorded. I was in northern Michigan at a state park located on small peninsula extending out into Lake Michigan. Call me a fool, but give me a nice campsite, a few radios, a picnic table, and a few beers on ice and I’m gonna have a good time. That evening the nearby roaring fire was a bonus, as well as the black sky full of stars overhead. The sliver of a moon didn't rise in the sky until several hours after sunset and the Milky Way was a magnificent white smudge across the sky. I haven’t seen it that distinctly since that night.

I was listening to my Optimus 12-603A, also known as a "Tuned RF AM-FM Extended Range Receiver." What it really is a Radio Shack ripoff of the excellent GE SuperRadio. It’s a good receiver, not quite as super as the original GE model, which can be found easily online for around forty bucks. Both have great sound and reception, but only AM & FM. No shortwave bands.

I also had an external Radio Shack's loop antenna (15-1853) hooked up to the radio as well. Like usual, this was a Radio Shack ripoff of another (probably better) product, but it’s a powerful device for thirty bucks. Requires no batteries. You adjust its knob to the frequency you’re tuning in, and then you rotate the antenna to get the best copy of the signal. In a good DX situation like I had that night, it’s quite possible to find two or possibly three separate readable stations at one frequency by just rotating the antenna. And remember, if you're going to try this yourself the AM antenna is a typically ferrite bar INSIDE the radio (usually mounted lengthwise across the top), so you need to turn the radio itself to improve the reception, not the extended aerial which is for FM and shortwave.

January 22, 2006

We all know that WFMU is poised to become the authoritative on-line resource for Cheesy Euro-Disco. However, for inexplicable reasons one of the most important and educational bands in this genre, Boney M., has not been featured on this blog yet. It is time for this to change.

It all started in 1975 when German producer Frank Farian scored a hit under the pseudonym Boney M. with "Baby Do You Wanna Bump?". He decided that he needed some good-looking dancers and singers to present to the public, and so the band Boney M. came into being, with official members Marcia Barrett, Liz Mitchell, Bobby Farrell, and Maizie Williams. Of those four, Bobby Farrell and Maizie Williams were only lip-syncing and dancing, all the male vocals were contributed by Farian himself. Later on Farian would perfect this technique by creating the lip-sync duo Milli Vanilli.

Somewhere in the Carolinas, Blowfly's bug mask is being used for nefarious purposes. This just in to Brian Turner from Blowfly world headquarters...

"Hey freaks,our van got broken into last night in charlotte by pros with tools who took out the driver side lock. so if you live around there -- please keep an eye out for this shit. and if you have this stuff, motherfucker im putting a curse on your dick! until you return it, you wont be able to get hard unless you're looking at micheal jackson!

here's the notice uncle tom wrote up:

The following items were stolen from Blowfly's Van while parked outside of the La Quinta Inn at 3100 Queen City blvd in Charlotte NC between 2:30 AM and 1 PM Saturday, January 21st. If you have any information regarding these items, please contact Tom Bowker at tom at blowflymusic dot com. If in Charlotte you can return the items with no questions asked to The Milestone club at 3400 tuckasegee rd.28208 The phone number at the milestone is: 704 398 0472. They also may be reached at neal at solidgoldempire dot com

Thank you for any and all help,Sincerely,Tom Bowker, Blowfly Music

1 Galien Kruger 1001 RB Bass Head SN .. E06104440

1 Fender Telecaster w/ Sunburst Finish. Has "I Kill Hippies" sticker on the back of the body

While I don’t really watch television, it saddens me that Beck’s sleazy radio work has advanced his presence in the media. Under fire from the Fox News ratings juggernaut, CNN (from what I’ve read) has made a number of compromises to their programming to make their content more glossy and Republican friendly. But this might be new low.

Along with right-wing talk stars Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Beck’s program is syndicated by Clear Channel’s “Premier Radio Network.” Now based in Philadelphia, Beck is widely heard (on about 200 stations) in the U.S. Nationally, he made his biggest splash as the ringleader and keynote speaker for Clear Channel’s pro-war “Rally For America” gatherings around the country in 2003.

While Beck political spiel falls in line with the armies of right-wing talk hosts who infest the American AM dial, he’s best known in talk radio circles for routinely making outrageous and psychopathic offhand remarks and discussing world issues in a rather cheeky jingoistic manner. A reformed alcoholic, Beck is reminiscent of a barstool loudmouth with a mean streak. However, instead of just being a tavern nuisance, Glenn Beck is broadcasting to a national audience. And now, the once respected cable news giant CNN has seen fit to add Beck’s flip sophomoric hyperbole to their prime time line-up.

January 20, 2006

Why it might not be the best idea for your grandparents to sit in the front row for a Plasmatics TV appearance. (6 MB wmv) Excerpted from Tom Snyder's infamous Tomorrow Show circa 1981, where various new wave/punk guests have been compiled into a very cool 2DVD compilation out on Shout Factory. Many of you have no doubt heard about Tom's "chat" with John Lydon and Keith Levene of PiL (Real Audio here that I played on the air last year); his true desire to understand what this "newfangled punk racket was all about" certainly shows in the fact that he allowed the Ramones, Iggy, the Jam, and Patti Smith (who actually interacts quite well with Snyder) into his NBC studio. But I definitely cringed at the roundtable discussion on punk's merits with a young Joan Jett and Paul Weller, a flowery-looking Kim Fowley and a slightly annoyed Bill Graham (who grants Weller with a nod that he has "some talent" unlike most of the punks, and warns Joan that if she ever "makes it" she'll not be able to help herself and fall in with the posh lifestyle).

Know what's better than dogs getting air? Dogs getting air in slow motion, with their fur flying and jowls bobbling: [download video, 15 meg quicktime]. It's a new video by Pleix, and it's the least I can do to counteract the growing plague of friday afternoon cat blogging. Although many of the dogs in Pleix's video are toy dogs, which technically speaking, are not actually dogs at all. via del.icio.us

Which brings up this old clip of a weightless dog floating through the cabin of his oblivious pilot owner. This has been around for ages, but when three airborne dog stories cross my path in so many hours, attention must be paid. [streaming Windows video] via b3ta.

But that's OK. For every Black Lab that takes a life by falling through a moving car, another (real) dog somewhere is sniffing out cancer and saving a life. That's more than can be said for frozen turkeys.

Yesterday morning, members of Congress, representatives from broadcast and cable networks, and the christian right all converged on Washington to discuss indecency and violent content on TV. Luckily, no one who represented the protection of first amendment rights was allowed in to sidetrack the matter at hand: how do we protect the children?

Despite the latest cable TV campaign which carefully instructs parents on such matters as how to turn off their TV or change the channel (gasp!) if they witness something they might not want their children to view, that just isn't enough for the Parents Television Council (PTC). Oh no, these right-wing christians want the FCC to regulate content on cable and satellite TV (they have always been exempt since consumers must pay for these services, whereas broadcast television falls under FCC rule because it is freely available to anyone with a TV set), and they also demand a-la-carte cable options, something that the cable industry absolutely dreads.

Cleverly, the satellite and cable companies came up with a plan to thwart a-la-carte and appease the PTC: offer a "family tier" of programming as an optional package. Censorship-happy democrats and republicans are now unsatisfied with most of these family-friendly packages because sports channels are excluded.

Dare we remind them what got us into this indecency/censorship mess in the first place?Checkmate.

Indeed. What'sweirder: a duck who rapes another "obviously dead duck" who died by crashing into the glass facade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam while being chased by the rapacious duck, or the guy who watches the duck rape for 75 minutes, finally interrupts it, then cuts open the dead duck to prove "the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex" and not "a senile female wearing a male plumage"? I was going to go with the science guy, but then I found out more about the duck:

"He [the duck] forcibly picked into the back, the base of the bill and mostly into the back of the head of the dead mallard for about two minutes, then mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force, almost continuously picking the side of the head (Fig. 2b). I watched this scene from close quarters behind the window (Fig. 1) until 19.10h during which time (75 minutes!) I made some photographs and the mallard almost continuously copulated his dead congener. [...] I secured the dead duck and left the museum at 19.25 h. The mallard was still present at the site, calling 'raeb-raeb' and apparently looking for his victim (who, by then, was in the freezer)."

January 19, 2006

In the early to mid-Sixties, the anti-communist movement was trembling before the power and popularity of singers like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Searching for a solution to this problem, Dr. Fred Schwarz recruited one Janet Greene (a Joan Baez fan herself) to be the "Musical Director" of his organization, The Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC). As his Musical Director (or "Anti-Baez," as he referred to her), Greene converted Schwarz's red-baiting tirades into pithy right-wing folk songs. From 1964 to 1966, Schwarz released eight songs by Greene on the CACC's Chantico label, and then in 1966, he reissued all eight songs as part of his 4-LP set, Nature of Communism Series.

By 1967, Greene had grown disenchanted with Schwarz and quit the CACC. While there were a few other attempts at right-wing folk music during this period, most notably The Goldwaters, Greene was the darling of the anti-communist right during a period when leftist folksongs dominated the popular imagination. For a brief, shining moment, the right wing had its own raven haired troubador singing lyrics like this, from her song Poor Left Winger (MP3):

I'm just a poor left-winger, befuddled, bewildered, forlorn, duped by a bearded singer, peddling his communist corn. In the cafe, espresso, sounds of guitars could be heard, twanging a plaintive folksong, spreading the communist word...

I was pleased to find that a few of my originally intended items for this post are actually available on CD. The Capsicum Red album, Appunti Per Un'Idea Fissa, seems to have been reissued in the 90s, and is listed as available here. While the original LP (from 1972) is fairly standard classically influenced progressive rock, with lots of heavy organ, the psych-pop flavored singles offered on the reissue are alone worth the price of the disc. There also seems to be a relatively new CD reissue of the Martin Davorin Jagodic album Tempo Furioso (originally released on Cramps), available here (usually "dispatched" within 24 hours); the Jagodic record is an absolute must-have for fans of wildly inventive music-and-sound collage, the style being similar to the best works of Luc Ferrari.

Also check out the Insect and Individual blog, a great new page, offering several NWW List items for download as complete albums. (You will need to have WinRAR installed.)

Now, on to the latest offerings:

Pôle - The first 2 Pôle LPs, both from 1975, were also the first 2 releases on the legendary French Pôle label. Almost every artist from the label's brief lifespan (1975-1977) is noted on the NWW List, and the ones that aren't there probably ought to be. Both Pôle albums are masterworks of early 70s Euro-space-rock, subtle, creepy and synth-laden. Personnel vary between the 2 albums, though arranger/synth player Paul Putti (who is also credited as producer on Inside The Dream) seems to be a constant. The lineup on Inside The Dream also features Jean-Louis Rizet, one-half of the Besombes-Rizet duo that created a monumental double-LP entitled "Pôle" that same year, so it's easy to see that the whole scene was quite incestuous, comprised of a small group of fertile, creative individuals. Here is a detailed page (ein Deutsches) on the Pôle albums. Each record is comprised of 3 tracks apiece; I've included 1 from each for download. [In the Maelstrom mp3][Villin-gen mp3]

Heratius - Gwendolyne - Eccentric and un-categorizable French band's sole LP, released in 1978. Electric guitars, reeds, organ, percussion and voice etc., fitting comfortably amongst Philemon Arthur and The Dung, Dedalus and the more experimental bits of Faust; in short, idiosyncratic with a capital "I." I have only an mp3 download of the album, so if there are in fact actual track titles, I'd love to know what they are. Played previously on WFMU by Charlie and Tony Coulter. [Track 2 mp3][Track 3 mp3][Track 5 mp3]

Günter Schickert - Samtvogel - Though Schickert's second album Uberfällig (from 1980) has been available on CD for some time, Samtvogel, originally issued on Brain in 1974, remains unavailable. Too bad, as it's a milestone of minimalist Krautrock guitar, with cyclical, hypnotic phrasing, similar to the work of Achim Reichel and Manuel Gottsching's Inventions for Electric Guitar album. If anything, Samtvogel is darker, more psychedelic and less plodding in its repetitions than the Gottsching album. This is a must for Krautrock fans, and way overdue for remaster/reissue. [Kriegsmaschinen Fahrt zur Holle mp3]

January 18, 2006

It seems that almost every time some bit of archival material from WFMU's sordid past is presented
on this blog, or any other, the phrase "dug out" is used by the author (as in: "You'll never believe what I dug out", or "it took me years to dig this one out".) This tactic is probably employed to help bolster the author's idea that what they've unearthed is indeed a priceless, archeological treasure. It's common knowledge that no one ever found the Rosetta Stone "behind the lawnmower" just as no one ever accidentally bumped into The Rake's Progress underneath a pile of monkey crap. But last night... last night, my friends.... I literally "dug out" something that exposes the Rosetta Stone and the Rake's Progress for the 3rd rate thrift store detritus that it truly is.

In September of 1991, I participated in a political action with the
members of TAG (Treatment Action Group - an off-shoot cell of ACT-UP)
that involved wrapping a giant yellow inflatable condom over Jesse
Helms' Arlington, VA home. The giant prophylactic replica had the words
"A CONDOM TO STOP UNSAFE POLITICS: HELMS IS DEADLIER THAN A VIRUS"
printed on the front of it, and was covering the top and front of his
house for about an hour while members of the media photographed and
filmed it and documented TAG's statements. After about thirty minutes
of activity, with local residents gathering to see what was happening,
the police calmly arrived amongst the media hubbub and ordered the
condom to be removed, which we did. No damage was left on the
residence, and we were not arrested (Helms ultimately decided not to
press charges). The stunt was obviously reported in local and national
news that afternoon.
It was a bright and sunny September day...